Thursday, 5 June 2014
Corruption: Nobody can intimidate Reps, says Tambuwal
The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr.
Aminu Tambuwal, on Thursday described as curious,
the growing trend by public officials to resist the
scrutiny of the National Assembly.
He said government officials either ignored legislative
invitations or simply refused to be accountable when
asked to respond to alleged corrupt acts.
But, he warned that the House would not be
intimidated by any official in its resolve to expose
corruption in governance.
Tambuwal addressed his colleagues in Abuja to mark
the end of the third session of the current 2011-2015
legislative tenure.
He observed that the “impunity” by government
officials was intended to “frustrate” the legislature from
performing its constitutional duties, but added that the
intimidation would not work.
“I wish to assure Nigerians that the House of
Representatives will not be intimidated into abdicating
its sacred duty to provide robust checks and balances
to executive action, especially for the purpose of
exposing corruption in the polity and of ensuring the
judicious management of our commonwealth,” he
stated.
The speaker also noted that “strange” things were
happening to the country’s democracy, where
government officials resorted to filing court cases in
the hope of stopping legislative proceedings that
called their actions to question.
His comment was a veiled reference to the Minister of
Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke,
who filed suits seeking to stop the House from
investigating the N10bn she allegedly spent to charter
a private jet in the last two years.
The speaker also observed that some government
officials did not know how to draw the line between the
duties of the Executive and the Legislative arms of
government.
Tambuwal spoke more, “This Honourable House has
only recently concluded the exercise of approving the
2014 Budget. The problem which the House
experienced in the budgetary process emanated from
several factors including the entrenched culture of
lateness in budget preparation and submission to the
National Assembly by the Executive branch.
“There have also been attempts to denigrate the
National Assembly for our insistence on instilling
sanity in the budgetary process. Only recently, a certain
government spokesman was quoted as claiming that
the National Assembly ‘distorted’ the 2014 budget.
“It is inconceivable that an institution endowed by the
Constitution with the legal duty and power to perform
a function can be said to be distorting the performance
of that function.
“Those desirous of a National Assembly that will
merely rubberstamp a draft budget submitted to it by
the Executive must look elsewhere.
“During the session, we witnessed the dawn of a
disturbing trend whereby people now go to court to
stop the National Assembly from exercising its
constitutional mandate and conducting its internal
operations. This is unheard of in jurisdictions where
genuine democracy is practiced and venerated.
“The usual democratic practice is that the powers of the
courts are activated to challenge laws enacted by the
legislature. This is the proper manner in which the
judiciary is enabled to perform its constitutional
function as the interpreter of both the constitution and
duly enacted laws.”
He argued that the resort to litigation was “an
encroachment on the powers of the legislature and a
slap in the face of the principle of Separation of
Powers.”
Tambuwal condemned the acts of terrorism by the
Boko Haram sect, which had led to the loss of of lives
of many Nigerians in the last three years.
He added that the abduction of over 200 school girls
by the sect was a new dimension to terrorism that
Nigeria and the international community must do
everything possible to confront and secure the release
of the girls.
He stated that youth unemployment and abuse of
citizens’ rights had also been on the increase and urged
the Federal Government and it’s agencies to respect the
fundamental human rights of Nigerians.
Tambuwal received a standing ovation from lawmakers
after the speech, which also drove home the point that
they had one year left in the four-year tenure.
The current tenure was inaugurated on June 6, 2011.
The House later adjourned to resume on June 24 after a
two-week end of session break.
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